Introduction to “Islam in China/China in Islam” Matthew S. Erie, Princeton University Allen Carlson, Cornell University The Islamic Renaissance in China There are over twenty-three million Muslims in the People’s Republic of China (PRC),1 more than in Malaysia, Tunisia, Russia, Jordan, Libya, or Kazakhstan and slightly fewer than the number in Saudi Arabia or Yemen. China’s Muslims, including those who are ethnically Chinese, Mongolian, and Turkic, have historically had a major impact on Chinese affairs, both domestic and across the border (Bellér-Hann, Harris, Cesaro, and Finley 2007; Fletcher 1975; Forbes 1986; Han 2013; Kim 2004; Millward 2007). In light of China’s ascendance in international relations over the past thirty years and, specifically, its (re)engagement with the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa (Carlson 2011; Kemp 2012; Olimat 2012; Simpfendorfer 2009), China’s Muslim population is poised to play a significant role in the evolving relationship between China and the rest of the developing world, as well as in the resurgence of global Islam in state politics. Following interethnic riots in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in 2009, a series of violent anti-state incidents have taken place in Xinjiang, home to a number of Muslim minorities, including the Uyghur, of whom there are about ten million. Most recently, violence has spilled out of Xinjiang, affecting Beijing in October 2013 and Kunming in 2014. In the first eight months of 2014 alone, suicide bombs and knife attacks have resulted in some 120 deaths and 332 injuries, according to PRC reports. The state has responded by labeling such events “terrorism” (kongbu zhuyi) and has launched a yearlong crackdown on Islamic radicalism in Xinjiang. While the state-run media has been careful not to presume that Uyghurs are behind the recent attacks, popular discourse on the Internet commonly conflates Muslim minorities, Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review E-Journal No. 12 (September 2014) • (http://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-12) Erie and Carlson 2 especially Uyghurs, with terrorists. Uyghurs complain of facing discrimination in hotels, restaurants, schools, and even mosques throughout China. The condition of Muslim minority- state relations would seem to confirm the political scientist Samuel Huntington’s thesis that there has been a “clash of civilizations” between the Chinese and Islamic spheres. Huntington’s world view, which has become popular in Chinese academia, suggests an inevitable confrontation between China and Islam. Rather than China versus Islam, the overarching theme of this special issue is “Islam in China/China in Islam.” In thinking through “Islam in China,” we argue that the relationship between China and Islam is not one of opposition, but rather one of cultural, linguistic, and economic imbrication. Indeed, it is difficult to describe Islam and China as two separate or essentialized entities. For some Muslim minorities in certain regions of China, there is no distinction between neo-Confucianism and Islam or between the nation-state and the global umma (community of Muslims). Through intellectual labor, modes of prayer and worship, art, calligraphy, architecture, cuisine, linguistic creoles, and legal pluralism, these Muslims embody multiple cultural referents. For other Muslim minorities in other regions in China, political and economic circumstances present challenges to living in accordance with Islam while also being a citizen of the PRC. In other words, the Muslim experience in China encompasses a complex mosaic of accommodation, adjustment, preservation, and, at times, resistance. Thus, generalizations about this incredibly diverse population are unhelpful, and careful attention must be paid to history, politics, and place. Similarly, the perspective of “China in Islam” notes that, following China’s remarkable economic reform, state policy has begun to integrate China into the larger Muslim world. Perhaps the most visible facet of this development since the late 1970s has been the rebuilding of mosques and centers of Islamic learning within the country. This has been accompanied by a resurgence throughout China of halal (Ch. qingzhen) restaurants. This development has been so extensive that in most of China’s cities it is possible to find Chinese Muslim cuisine, bookstores, clothing and grocery stores, cemeteries, monuments, and places of worship. In addition, Sufi pilgrimage routes have been reestablished within the country. Outside China, the hajj to Mecca has been performed, educational and scholarly networks have been reconstituted, and ties through trade and investment with Arab nations have been consummated. Such international ties have led to the circulations of migrants, books, and capital between China and the Islamic Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review E-Journal No. 12 (September 2014) • (http://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-12) Erie and Carlson 3 heartland in the Middle East. These trends are a result of both state policy and the labor of China’s Muslims. Still, “China in Islam” points to the tensions between globalizing Muslim communities within China and the political regime. Despite Islam’s visibility in China, religious reform has been limited, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to channel transnational Muslim financial networks for its own benefit while curtailing the possibility of Islamic extremism (Becquelin 2000; Clarke 2007; Millward 2004; Millward and Tursun 2004). Following the “Arab Spring,” China is embedded in a global reawakening of Islamic consciousness and practice. It, too, is contributing to new modes of Islamic finance in Hong Kong, novel Muslim Internet communities, and halal food industries—all with a global reach (Chen 2013; Ho 2013; Peterson 2006). Within this general frame, we note that Muslim minorities in China and the connections they are forging with coreligionists abroad are diverse. Hui, the largest of China’s Muslim minority groups as defined by the state, are found throughout China, although they are concentrated in the northwest, including in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Gansu Province, Qinghai Province, and Xinjiang (Gladney [1991] 1996). Additionally, the northwest is home to most Mongolian (Dongxiang) and Turkic Muslims, specifically the Uyghurs, and also to the Uzbek, Kazakh, Salar, and Kyrgyz (Bovingdon 2010). The Tajik, found in Xinjiang, are of Iranian descent and constitute the only Shi’a population in China. The Muslims in the northwest occupy some 60 percent of the landmass of the PRC and border Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. As Turkic minority groups in China have long- standing ties by blood, commerce, and faith with kinspeople in bordering states, relations between the Chinese state and Muslim minorities has implications for China’s geopolitics in the region (Mackerras 2003). The northwest is dotted with cities considered holy by China’s Muslims, including Linxia (Hezhou) and Lintan (Taozhou) in Gansu; Xunhua, Hualong, and Xining in Qinghai; Yinchuan in Ningxia; and Kashgar, Yarkand, and Hotan in Xinjiang. Similarly, Yunnan Province in the southwest, bordering Southeast Asian states, has significant numbers of Hui and great centers of learning, like Shadian, that have been formative to Hui collective consciousness (Atwill 2005). Beginning in the Ming period, the Hui have adapted Islam to neo-Confucian thought and, in so doing, generated novel forms of learning, mysticism, and ingenious adaptation to a predominately non-Muslim society (Benite 2005). Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review E-Journal No. 12 (September 2014) • (http://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-12) Erie and Carlson 4 These cities and their Muslim inhabitants have experienced the possibilities and frustrations of China’s economic cum religious liberalization. Thus, the “paradox of China’s post-Mao reforms” (Goldman and MacFarquhar 1999) has particular resonance for China’s Muslims. They have benefited from state policies that have promoted Arabic education in Muslim minority regions. Young Muslim men and women work as translators in Shenzhen, Yiwu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other cities that are attracting Arab and North African businesspeople. State-run schools are prohibited from including the Quran in their curriculum, however. State policy encourages Arabic, but not Persian—the language of many Sufi texts—as Sufism is still labeled “feudal” in the rubric of Chinese socialism. Hui and Uyghur can attend state-sponsored hajj trips, but their numbers are severely limited. Chinese imams (Ch. ahongs) must undergo “patriotic” education and licensing by the state, and students (Ch. manla) are restricted in their study locations and destinations. Additionally, the state has contained Muslim civil society through its regulations, namely those of the China Islamic Association, the organization constituted by the government to communicate state law and policy to the Muslim masses. China is hardly unique in implementing security regimes over Muslim minorities. A growing body of literature across the social sciences has contributed to our understanding of the contradictions of multiculturalism and constitutionalism vis-à-vis Muslim minorities in Western liberal states (An-Na’im 2008; Emon 2006; Fadel 2008; Ramadan 1999; Rohe 2007). The status of Muslim minorities as citizens of a socialist state and cultural subjects of China adds additional